CPI-M leader Mani skips date with police

Idukki: CPI-M leader M M Mani, facing criminal charges for his controversial speech in which he stated the party had eliminated its foes in the past, on Wednesday failed to comply with police summons to appear before investigators.

Instead, his lawyers turned up before the investigation team at Thodupuzha in the district and told them the CPI-M leader had already approached the Kerala High Court for quashing the FIR against him, police sources said.

The CPI-M Idukki district secretary had on Tuesday filed a petition in Kerala High Court with a plea to quash the FIR drawn up by police, charging him in three cases on the basis of his speech at a public meeting at Thodupuzha recently.

His speech had deeply embarrassed the party leadership, already passing through a convulsive phase with a flare up in internal commotions and coming under a shadow in the wake of the murder of Marxist rebel TP Chandrasekharan.

Some CPI-M workers from north Kerala were arrested in connection with the brutal killing of Chandrasekharan, who floated rebel outfit Revolutionary Marxist Party after his expulsion from the parent party.
Mani had said the party in the 1980s drew up a list of political rivals in Idukki district and eliminated three of them. Ironically, he made the "disclosure" at a public meeting called to explain to party workers and sympathisers that CPI-M had no involvement in the killing of Chandrasekharan.

With his speech triggering a political storm in Kerala and outside, police registered cases against him as a prelude to re-investigate some of the cases referred to by Mani.